


Things My Grandma Never Told Me.

by amorremanet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 30 Days of SPN Women, Community: 100_women, Episode: s03e06 Red Sky at Morning, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-08
Updated: 2012-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-03 22:11:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/386526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorremanet/pseuds/amorremanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>In the summer of 2006, Becky finds some photographs while pawing around through her Grandma's attic.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things My Grandma Never Told Me.

In the summer of 2006, Becky finds the photographs while pawing around through her Grandma's attic, choking on the dust clouds and stomping on the bunnies, hair tamed into a ponytail so it won't get _completely_ coated in the stuff.

Not that she really _minds_ —okay, the dust is _gross_ , but Becky has a mission. She's in charge of doing costumes for the production of _Brighton Beach Memoirs_ going on down at the community theatre and she needs some inspiration. Some accessories to borrow. Some potential period-appropriate decor to propose to Jane, her friend since first grade and the production's set designer, and Risa, their friend and stage-manager. She hasn't found much—at least, she hasn't found as much as she wished for when she got permission to come up here. The pile she's building up by the stairway has plenty of useful things in it.

Burrowed away between Grandma Gert's old davenport and a stack of boxes, Becky finds an oakwood box. She remembers seeing it on her grandparents' dresser when she was little—it loomed over her, enthroned right in the center of Grandma's vanity mirror, surrounded by a court made up of her various trinkets. The rosary with the red translucent beads on the silver chain; the black cord with the phylactery that held a piece of Grandma's father's bone; the necklace of interlocking paper rings that Becky made at Sunday School when she was five, for Grandparents' Appreciation Day. No matter what attendants it had, though, Grandma Gert's box commanded the attention—it shone through the clouds of miscellany, gleaming, like. Even if there wasn't any light on it.

Even now, Becky finds the box large enough that it hurts to set in her lap, with the old glass covering, resting as it always did, over a circle of green silk that has a multi-foliate rose embroidered on it.

(Becky's reading TS Eliot, right now. She's throwing his turns of phrase around in everyday conversation, whenever she remembers to do it. She's recently matriculated from Sarah Lawrence—well, it's been two months, she supposes, so it might not be that long… and she guesses that, maybe, 'matriculated' sounds pretentious, but it's not as though she goes around _saying_ it; she just thinks that finishing her BA needs to be _different_ than graduating from high school, so it needs a different word. Aside from that, it's comforting to remember that, no matter what her little brother says, Becky isn't stupid, isn't weak or a waste of space, and that her degree wasn't a waste of time.

She has no idea what to do with herself, now. No job offers, no old internships that are particularly willing to write her a letter of recommendation, only two, maybe three, professors on whom she made any kind of lasting impression and one of them, she's certain, hates her… Rereading her TS Eliot settles Becky's stomach a little. Quoting him for people makes her feel smart. Throwing around twenty-five-cent words takes her mind off the nagging questions from her parents, the barbs of so just what, exactly, does she plan to do now, with her handy-dandy, nifty-keen liberal arts degree. …Or, as Danny's so fond of calling it, her, "Spock and Kirk are married because _t'hy'la_ means _husband_ in Vulcan, and I don't have to prove it because of postmodernism, and I can say, 'fuck you,' in five different languages, none of which are even _real_ because nobody speaks _fucking Sindarin_ , Becky" degree.)

Running her fingers down the box, Becky stirs up the box's thin film of dust. From the looks of the thing, it was polished, at one point, and fairly well-kept—despite where she's found it, it's not as neglected as the rest of the things up here. The dust covering's lighter on it, at least—and unlike all of the times she tried to open it when she was younger, Becky finds the lock undone. She nudges at the lid… then, she hesitates. Sighs and tucks a loose clump of hair behind her ear. Jane and Risa would forgive her for skipping over this. There's enough up here that's useful. Becky doesn't have to go into someplace so forbidden… She wrinkles her nose, bites on her lower lip. Feels like her stomach might try to fall out of her.

And clenches her eyes shut as she flings the lid off. On the other hand, if there's something in here that they can use—something that could be the perfect finishing touch on their designing efforts—then it's Becky's _duty_ to investigate it. Find it and bring it to their production meeting tomorrow. She can't just shirk that task, not when it's so important… Opening her eyes again takes more effort than Becky's comfortable with, and at first, she doesn't see anything that deserves her anxiety. There's a pearl necklace (with little blue beads for every few pearls; they look like sapphires, but Becky doesn't really trust her own judgment about jewelry); a book of flowers that Mom pressed when she was a kid; yellowing envelopes that upon investigation reveal old love letters that Grandpa Ben wrote to Grandma…

And finally, the photographs. Even these aren't especially noteworthy, at first—black-and-white, most of them, featuring scenes and momentous occasions and snapshots that don't surprise Becky in the slightest… Grandma and Grandpa's wedding photograph, in which she looks like a snow-beast and he just looks uncomfortable. A photo of Grandma and her sisters at Great-Aunt Rose's debutante ball. Mom, and Aunt Louise, and Uncle Charlie up in Martha's Vineyard, not a one of them older than seven or eight. Then there's one of Grandma Gert all hugged up to some young man who definitely isn't Grandpa Ben.

Becky gets goosebumps, just looking at it—did Grandpa Ben know about this, she wonders, assuming an affair… at least until she finds a photograph of him and the same young man, huddled together on a dance-floor, seeming way more intimate than _just friends_. Just underneath that one, Becky finds a snapshot of Grandma Gert kissing another woman. Again, _intimately_. Open-mouthed and everything—and they're nude in bed together, in the snapshot under that, with Grandpa visible in the mirror behind them, taking the picture—Becky's lips tingle as her cheeks twinge pink. She's read so much worse than this online, but… even so… There's something different about Aragorn/Faramir and… her grandmother. In bed. With another woman. Looking, for lack of a better word, _thoroughly fucked out_.

Task utterly forgotten, Becky fumbles downstairs, photographs in hand, and finds Grandma Gert in the study with a cup of tea and one of the pulpy paperbacks she's taken to reading lately. (The one in her hands is called _Something Wicked_ , which forces Becky to bite back on rolling her eyes. Seriously. She understands the value of brain-candy, she absolutely does… but Grandma could totally find better than _these_ things. Everything about these books is all wrong, from the hideous cover-art to the title… Who even titles a series _Supernatural_?)

Becky stumbles to a half, dropping the pictures on her Grandma's book and watching helplessly as they skid down the pages to fall in her lap—and Becky curses the gawky, adolescent clumsiness that she never quite got over, flushing scarlet… She starts to babble, throwing out a million questions faster than her mouth can keep up with, but she falls silent when Grandma Gert smiles at her over the teacup's rim, eyebrow arching and eyes twinkling like a devil's.

"Take a seat, Rebecca, darling," she says, waving her hand at the seat on the other side of the end-table and folding up her book. "How would you like to hear some stories?"

All Becky manages to say—and all she really _needs_ to say—is simple: "Oh my— _yes, please_."


End file.
